Jyoti Singh, a physiotherapy student, was attacked by six men on December 16 after she boarded a bus with a friend as they returned from a trip to a cinema in one of the city's smart shopping centres.

She was beaten so badly that 95pc of her intestines had to be removed in a series of operations.

She died 13 days later in a Singapore hospital where doctors said she had suffered from severe internal and brain injuries, a heart attack and abdominal infections.

Tortured

Five men appeared in court earlier this week charged with her kidnap, gang rape and murder; while a sixth defendant, who is believed to be 17, will be tried in a juvenile court.

Lawyers for four of the men said they would plead not guilty and claimed they were tortured by police into making false confessions.

They will be accused by the victim from beyond the grave in a "dying declaration" made to a magistrate as she fought to survive her injuries in Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital on December 21, eight days before she died.

Usha Chaturvedi, a magistrate understood to have taken Ms Singh's statement in the presence of her mother, asked the victim how she would like her then gang rapists, and now murderers, to be punished?

"All of them should be hung to death so that these criminals do not do any such acts to any other girls, which is inhuman. They are animal-like people. They should be burned alive," she replied.

Ms Singh said she and her friend Awninder Pandey boarded a white chartered bus after watching the film 'The Life of Pi'.

They had struggled to make their way home and had jumped on the bus after hearing the conductor call out the destination, Dwarka, where she lived.

Beating

There were "six or seven" people on the bus and they assumed they were passengers. They had been apprehensive, but by the time they had paid their fare it was too late.

"The conductor closed the doors of the bus. He closed the lights of the bus and came towards my friend and started abusing and beating him," she said.

"They held his hands and held me and took me to the back of the bus. They tore my clothes and raped me in turns.

"They hit me with an iron rod and bit me on my entire body with their teeth.

"They took all belongings, my mobile phone, etc. The driver of the bus kept changing so that he could also rape me."

She and her friend had put up a fierce fight at the outset, she said, but their screams to passers-by outside went unheard.